Fascinating Davos moments with “healthy ageing” scientist Constantinos Demetriades

DAVOS — The primary advantage of regular returns to the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos is the way one gets to witness broad global trends imposing themselves – or fading away. In recent years, the science of ageing has been moving ever higher on the agenda, aligned perhaps with the demographic shift in the rich countries which dominate the global economy. Constantinos Demetriades (36) is one of the field’s star researchers, leading the prestigious Max Planck Institute for the Biology of Ageing. So if you want a long and healthy life, listen to this fascinating interview – one of those “only in Davos” experiences. – Alec Hogg

Davos 2019 – this coverage of the global conversation on change is brought to you by BrightRock, the first ever needs matched life insurance that changes as your life changes.

I’m here, in Davos, with a man who’s described as a star researcher. Now, you’re going to have to tell us a bit more about that later, but it’s Dr Constantinos Demetriades, did I get the pronunciation right?

Yes, that’s correct. It didn’t sound very Greek, but it shouldn’t. I’m 36 and I started my independent group almost two-years ago, at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing, Cologne, Germany.

Remembering our audience is primarily South African so, they probably haven’t heard. They should have heard of Max Planck, but maybe in a nutshell, what is the Max Planck Institute about?

So, Max Planck is a public organisation in Germany. It is holding more than 80 research institutes all over Germany, and some of them are even abroad. The various institutes actually research about nearly anything, from bio-medicine, to ageing, to nuclear physics, to material science so, literally everything. The freedom that we get as researchers, at the Max Planck Institute is amazing and this is one of the things that I really appreciate there. There are no quotas. As soon as you get the trust and you get the position to do research there – you can work on anything that really motivates you, and drives your imagination and curiosity, which is really amazing.

And Max Planck himself was a predecessor, I suppose, of Einstein, who everybody has heard of.

In a way, yes. He was one of the founders of modern psychics I’d say.

What drew you to this field of ageing?

My piece of the pie in ageing research has to do with, what we call, nutrient sensing. To simplify that, I always like to use a metaphor from nature, to help people understand. So, some animals like bears, for example, they hibernate so, they’re active when the conditions are optimal, and when they have enough food in their environment. On the contrary, in the winter, when the food resources are limited, they lower their metabolism and they kind of sleep until the conditions are optimal again. So, this is exactly what our cells also do. We have trillions of cells in our bodies and each one of them has a very complex mechanism to sense whether enough nutrients, like food, is available in its environment and to adjust its functions based on the availability of these nutrients.

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Why is this important? This is important because when these mechanisms are dis-regulated and this happens very often, in many diseases like cancer, diabetes, but also during ageing. When these mechanisms start to malfunction, this is a major cause of these diseases and it can drive ageing so that we know very well, at the moment. So, what we are doing in my group is, we are trying to understand how precisely these mechanisms work in healthy cells and what goes wrong during ageing and disease. Aiming, eventually, to identify novel ways, more targeted, and more precise ways so, I would say that precision is the key word here. To be able to understand where we should be acting in these mechanisms, to eventually deliver drugs that might help people one day, against these diseases.

So, it’s almost like reductionism, in a way, going down right to the very basics?

This is very correct so, I like saying quite often that we have been doing things the wrong way so far, because we have drugs that target these mechanisms and even nutritional habits so, eating less is definitely good for everyone. However, we’re not there yet, and in my opinion the reason why we’re not there yet is that we don’t understand how precisely these things work. So, we touch on something and this, it’s like a network, this affects everything else. So, we really need to understand what exactly happens in a very precise manner, every time we inhibit one of those factors with a drug, or when we eat this or that kind of nutrient, in order to be able to predict better where to intervene in order to avoid all the side effects or having drugs that prove to be eventually inefficient. We’re really looking down to the molecular mechanisms, in order to… We aim to improve the efficiency of the overall process, without just trying things randomly and checking whether they’re going to work or not, in the end.

For real practical insights, as a person of your age, who looks incredibly healthy and hopefully, you’re going to live a long time. What do you do to ensure that?

This is going a little bit against my research, I’ll say so, but I’m trying to exercise as much as I can, as much as my busy schedule allows.

What kind of exercise?

I’m doing a little bit of biking. I like more outdoor activities so, I’m not the kind of person that would go in the gym and start pumping-up or anything. I’m trying to bike, I jog a little bit.

But nothing terribly strenuous but it gets your heart going.

And I’ll say that it doesn’t need to be something too intense. Actually, too much is not good anymore so, a little bit of exercise, being a bit careful about how much we eat, what we eat. Too much protein is definitely not good. I’m not saying that people should not eat meat, on the contrary. Meat is also very important because it contains very important nutrients and nutritional value. But let’s say, the bottom-line, if I can put it like this; too much of anything is not good for us.

The UK have got a five-a-day program. Is that sensible? Does that align with your research?

It makes perfect sense to actually distinguish between different nutritional groups, based on the nutritional value and the actual quality of food. However, things are not that simple. For example, usually fat is considered bad but not all kinds of fat are the same. So, you can get fat from olive oil, which is a really great source of fat, and we really need it. Or you can get fried sun oil, which is really like saturated oil, which is bad for your health. I think we need to be more specific in the identification of the nutrient groups.

It’s interesting to see how the world is changing, environmentally or environmental consciousness is now coming to the fore. But the same thing with ageing, perhaps because of demographics. Are we on the right track though, because there’s a whole lot of popular science, which one sometimes has to question?

I will say that this really raises the importance and the necessity for us, the scientists, to act more responsibly and first of all, to communicate this research with the public so that, like you said, there is a lot of fake ‘research’ and lots of anecdotal stories about what to do to stay healthy and live longer. Some of those might even be dangerous for people. So, it is our responsibility to inform the public about our research and I’m really optimistic about the future. I would say it’s the near future so, I would say within the next 5 to 10-years – I think we’re going to have really amazing discoveries about how our nutritional habits should be, and how we should be better using drugs that are already available. Or, which mechanisms like I was explaining before, we should be targeting to develop a new class of drugs that would be improved and would act more precisely and more efficiently in the future.

You mention a lot about drugs, pharmaceuticals. There’s a whole movement that says, you should keep them away from your body.

I think this is the reason why we live to our 80s today, and we didn’t do that in the 50s. So, the health system, I know a lot of people tried to move back the nature and of course, this is really good but there are conditions that you really need to treat with drugs. I will say that it’s very dangerous to stick to, like natural products, without having proof that they work. So, some of them work perfectly fine, even better than drugs, and it’s great if we stick to that. However, in some conditions we really need to move to something that has been produced by humans. So, this has increased our life expectancy from like living up to our 50s, to living up to our 80s now.

But how do you know, as a layman? How do you know which natural products are good for you? Have you got any tips that you can pass on?

Let’s say, similar to the research that we’re doing on testing chemical compounds, like the drugs that pharma companies produce or even before the pharma companies produced it. Like the ones in the discovery stage. Researchers are doing exactly the same thing with natural compounds so, this is going through the whole process of being tested in simple systems, in the lab, and moving to animal systems, and going to clinical trials. So, all of these compounds will need to go and do go, in most cases, through the same processes like chemical compounds do.

Where do we find the results of that research?

There are public level databases like PubMed for example, and others that people can research with any kind of keywords. These databases only list research that has been through peer reviewing. So, in most cases at least. In the majority of the cases the results are in the data that you can find there, which can be reliable and trustworthy.

So, we have data available. We have more information than we’ve ever had in the past, we just need to use it properly. But it hasn’t helped us yet with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s – those two, I heard them being described as medicines to twin monsters. You’re still young, you’re 36, are you confident that a cure will be found in your lifetime?

Yes, I would like to clarify that. Although we don’t have a cure yet. The treatment of these conditions has been improved dramatically over the last years. For example, even in Alzheimer’s of course, there is no cure but people can live longer before developing severe symptoms and this is because of all the research and the drug development process. Although it’s not my field, I have to say, there is really immense research going on at the moment. So, I’m very confident and I don’t want to promise a cure or anything, but I’m very confident that we’re going to make great steps in the years to come, also in these directions.

Helped, no doubt, by big data. Do you use much of that?

We’re looking more into the small mechanistic details. We’re also producing big data from our process, but we only do that as a tool to then look at the big picture first and then to focus down to the small details, in order to understand how exactly, these things work.

You mentioned earlier that the Max Planck Institute and the European Council, who have actually brought you to Davos, which we need to talk about in a minute, they give you lots of freedom. How does that differ from somebody who is a tenure at a university?

Universities I would say, is a similar situation, at least in Germany and in most European countries. Freedom in science is something super important because it allows you to perform curiosity driven research and this is exactly what generates all the discoveries so, you need to be curious and to ask questions that are not biased, in the first place. This is an amazing environment and I’m happy that you mentioned the European Research Council (ERC). So, all of these organisations like ERC and Max Planck Society give you all this freedom, and this is a very important step in research and in science.

How’s it making your life different? What are you being able to be curious about, which perhaps would not have been supported by a more, traditional route?

Let’s say that the science that we do has a very strong potential to lead to the development of drugs in the near future, or let’s say, in the next 10 years. However, at this stage, this is something that, let’s say more pharma companies would not be interested in at all. Therefore, you really need organisations like the ERC to trust this curiosity driven research, and let’s say, facilitate this development period until you have something that could be readily applicable to the clinic or interesting for the public. So, this allows you to do your research until you reach that stage, and this is really amazing.

Silicon Valley is very interested, at the moment, in ageing. There’s an enormous amount of investment that’s going into it. What is your view on the ethicality, if you like, of that or how that impacts the whole search for truth and search for answers?

Usually, in that case, people are more interested in having something yesterday so, as soon as possible, and in some cases that’s how things work but, in most cases, that’s exactly how things don’t work. And of course, people cannot be patient so, time is ruthless and it doesn’t wait for us. So, if someone or an organisation, or a person, or a funding agency needs to have results, applicable results now, it’s fine to ask for that. But at the same time, people, funding sources, and the public need to understand the importance of basic science because so far, we’ve been working on a trial and error thing, and this is totally inefficient. So, I should mention at this point that more than 86% of the drugs or chemical compounds that are in clinical trials are doomed to fail.

In my opinion, this is because we don’t exactly understand what they do. Like the small details so, they either prove to be inefficient, or not to be tolerated by patients due to severe side effects. So, the public and the community needs to realise that a future without strong, basic research would simply be a future of trials and errors, and this is 86% errors. So, I would say that we need, at the end of the day, a combination of funding-based research in order to build the foundations or produce knowledge that can be applied later on. Then invest on that part of the knowledge that seems more promising to lead to the development of new interventions to improve health and ageing, in a timely manner.

It’s exciting to hear this, and in the long-term one has to be optimistic about the consequences but what about people who are in their 60s, or even in their 70s now. How can they, to close off with, adjust their lifestyles or invest in ways that will keep them healthier for longer?

One recommendation, not ourselves but research has a lot of data on that now. Staying active is very important, and by active, I mean both physically active and mentally active. It is really clear now that keeping your brains busy during ageing, really reduces the chances of dementia and Alzheimer’s, and the same thing for your body. So, people staying active and it doesn’t need to be really heavy stuff so, just walking a few hundred metres per day, or biking a little bit is very important for our bodies to stay active. The second part is nutrition so, avoiding too much protein, too much bad fat is only for the good.

brain health

And crosswords and Sudoku, and playing the horses.

So, all this kind of stuff trains your brain so, crosswords, Sudoku and video games – everything that keeps your brain active, I will say that it’s really great and the elderly should be doing more of that.

What about retiring at 55? We recently published a story, which said that if you retire late, you’re not likely to live that long so, it’s confusing.

It’s hard to answer this question because I think there are so many parameters that we don’t take into account. Let’s say a person doing office work – retiring at 65, is not the same as like a lumberjack retiring at 65. At the same time, someone retiring early. We don’t know what they’re going to be doing after that. Some people have hobbies, and travel a lot and stay active and that’s perfectly fine. Some others might just retreat and do nothing, and this is definitely not good. So, I wouldn’t generalise. I know that we people like to have statistics and this is usually quite fancy for the media, but I would really avoid generalising. I think this is a case-by-case scenario.

Davos 2019 – this coverage of the global conversation on change is brought to you by BrightRock, the first ever needs matched life insurance that changes as your life changes.

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